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The essence of religion is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That and nothing less than that is religion. Everything else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the needs of men.

Annie Besant

Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh with the object of gaining experience in worlds below the spiritual, in order that he may be able to master and to rule them, and in later ages take his place in the creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.
ANNIE BESANT

Creation Experience Intelligence Man Place Rule Spiritual Universe World
Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and – as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis – emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness.
ANNIE BESANT

Death Immortal Man Repeat Skin
Theosophy has no code of morals, being itself the embodiment of the highest morality; it presents to its students the highest moral teachings of all religions, gathering the most fragrant blossoms from the gardens of the world-faiths.
ANNIE BESANT

Faith Garden Moral Present Religion Student Teaching World
Knowledge is essential to conquest; only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.
ANNIE BESANT

Character Creation Domination Environment Help Ignorance Knowledge
What, after all, is the object of education? To train the body in health, vigor and grace, so that it may express the emotions in beauty and the mind with accuracy and strength.
ANNIE BESANT

Beautiful Body Education Emotion Expression Health Strength Training
There is no life without consciousness; there is no consciousness without life.
ANNIE BESANT

Life Spiritual
Evil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end.
ANNIE BESANT

End Evil Imperfection
When we recognise that unity of all living things, then at once arises the question – how can we support this life of ours with least injury to the lives around us; how can we prevent our own life adding to the suffering of the world in which we live?
ANNIE BESANT

Injury Life Live Question Recognition Suffering Unity World
This Old Testament – containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality – is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy – if there were anyone to be blasphemed – blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker.
ANNIE BESANT

Authority Divine Freedom Law Mad Mistake Moral Thinking Word Writing
Where love rules, laws are not needed.
ANNIE BESANT

Law Love Need Rule
You should always take a religion at its best and not at its worst, from its highest teachings and not from the lowest practices of some of its adherents.
ANNIE BESANT

Best Practice Religion Teaching Worst Yourself
Purification is but the cleaning of the lamp-glass which hides the Light.
ANNIE BESANT

Hide Light Purity
For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.
ANNIE BESANT

Evil Greatness Hate Leadership Woman
We learn much during our sleep, and the knowledge thus gained slowly filters into the physical brain, and is occasionally impressed upon it as a vivid and illuminative dream.
ANNIE BESANT

Dreams Impression Knowledge Learning
When a man, a woman, see their little daily tasks as integral portions of the one great work, they are no longer drudges but co-workers with God.
ANNIE BESANT

God Greatness Man Woman Work
Nothing but an imperious intellectual and moral necessity can drive into doubt a religious mind, for it is as though an earthquake shook the foundations of the soul, and the very being quivers and sways under the shock.
ANNIE BESANT

Foundation Intellectual Moral Necessary Soul

The essence of religion is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That and nothing less than that is religion. Everything else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the needs of men.

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The essence of religion is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That and nothing less than that is religion. Everything else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the needs of men.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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